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I think most consumers have had at least one frustrating phone call exchange with a company, trying to cancel a service that was so easy to sign up for online, but find themselves running into roadblocks when trying to end that same service.

Its almost July 4th, and soon Californians from San Diego to Redding will gather to watch fireworks and enjoy the peak of summer. Most of us will eat a barbecued meal with family and friends as well — the Fourth is the number one grilling event of the year. Here are some key things to know to protect your health when you’re preparing your holiday barbecue.

A new report from Environment California Research & Policy Center, CALPIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group shows that if the state’s seven largest transit agencies replace their 3,130 diesel buses with electric buses, it would be like taking more than 34,000 cars off the road each year, when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing toxic air pollution.

We applaud L'Oréal, the manufacturer behind popular brands like Garnier, Maybelline, and numerous perfumes and colognes, for its commitment today to tell customers the ingredients in its product line. But L'Oréal needs to set a timeline to disclose its ingredients. Customers deserve to know what ingredients we are using, because "we’re worth it."

News Release: Our latest report based on the CFPB's public Consumer Complaint database reviews the most-complained about debt collectors. Funny, a new CFPB complaint "snapshot" does not. The report comes as the CFPB's acting director threatens to make the database non-public. If the CFPB both shuts down the public database and continues to issue industry-friendly reports that don’t give out any real information, the public and marketplace harm is even greater.

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In March 2015, CALPIRG won a big victory when the San Diego Water Board voted 6-0 to uphold a previous decision to deny the Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency (TCA) a permit to build a 5.5-mile extension to their existing toll road, State Route 241. After reviewing transportation projects across America, CALPIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group selected TCA’s Tesoro Extension Project as one of 11 “highway boondoggles,” because of TCA’s poor financial track record on their previous toll roads.

We helped win real reforms that led to the creation of a new California health care marketplace, Covered California. New health insurance options are now available to small businesses and individuals that could save consumers a lot of money. Consumers are able to make choices based not only on cost, and access to care, but the quality of that care.

In 2012, CALPIRG worked with college campuses across the state to ensure that both online and paper voter registration options were made available to students. Through our outreach, we helped to register more than 40,000 young Californians to vote.

More than 50,000 Californians, many of them CALPIRG members, joined our call to put our state on record in opposition to the Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to a torrent of Super PAC-fueled campaign spending. The California Legislature passed our resolution — joining more than a dozen other states — calling for a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Citizens United decision.

CALPIRG’s advocacy helped ensure the health care law will bring down costs by setting up a competitive health insurance marketplace. In 2010, California became the first state in the country to begin setting up our state health insurance exchange.

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The third annual Chain Reaction report, which grades companies on their antibiotics policies and practices, found that 14 out of the top 25 restaurants in the U.S. have taken steps to restrict the routine use of antibiotics in the production of the chicken they serve, up from nine just one year ago. While restaurant chains made great progress on chicken, the groups who authored the report found that there were no new commitments to limit antibiotic use in beef and pork.

The men and women who serve in America’s military are also active consumers in America’s financial marketplace, where tricks and traps can cause harm to their finances and their lives. An analysis of more than 44,000 complaints submitted by active duty servicemembers and military veterans to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and contained in its Consumer Complaint Database finds that mistreatment of servicemembers by financial companies is widespread.

A review of 79 special districts’ online financial transparency shows that while a few districts are meeting the goals of “Transparency 2.0” – a standard of comprehensive, one-stop, oneclick budget accountability and accessibility – the vast majority do little to inform citizens about how they spend money.

Millions of Americans are contacted by debt collectors every year over debt related to medical expenses. This review of complaints submitted to the CFPB suggest that many consumers contacted about medical debt should not have been contacted in the first place, and that many contacts involve aggressive or inappropriate tactics.

Our children need safe drinking water – especially at school where they go to learn and play each day. Unfortunately, lead is contaminating drinking water at schools and pre-schools across the country. As our report shows, states including California are so far failing to make the grade when it comes to keeping lead out of drinking water at school.

What could be more basic than providing clean, safe drinking water for our kids in schools? On Wednesday night the Oakland Unified School Board meeting voted to approve a new drinking water policy to help identify and remove sources of lead exposure to kids in drinking water fountains.

The stakes in the current infrastructure debate are high. But what matters most is not the size of any federal infrastructure package, nor how it is financed, nor even how many jobs it creates in the coming years. What matters most is building the infrastructure that will enable America to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

We generate way too much waste, and companies use their power in the marketplace to make things harder to repair. That’s the idea behind “Right to Repair” laws -- they check companies ability to limit repairs and empower us to fix our own stuff.